Rongbuk Monastery

Rongbuk Monastery, also known as Dzarongpu or Dzarong, is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery of the Nyingma sect in Basum Township, Dingri County, Shigatse Prefecture of the Tibet Autonomous Region, China.

Rongbuk monastery lies near the base of the north side of Mount Everest at 4,980 metres (16,340 ft) above sea level, at the end of the Dzakar Chu valley.[ For Sherpas living on the south slopes of Everest in the Khumbu region of Nepal, Rongbuk Monastery was an important pilgrimage site, accessed in a few days travel across the Himalaya through the Nangpa La. The monastery was also regularly visited by the early expeditions to Mount Everest in the 1920s and 1930s after a five weeks journey from Darjeeling in the Indian foothills of the Himalaya. Most past and current expeditions attempting Mount Everst from the north Tibetan side do establish their Base Camp near the tongue of the Rongbuk Glacier about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) south of the Monastery.

Nowadays, the monastery is accessible by road in a two to three hour drive from the Friendship Highway from either Shelkar (New Tingri) or Old Tingri. From Rongbuk monastery, there are dramatic views on the north face of Mount Everest, and one of the first British explorers to see it, John Noel, described it: "Some colossal architect, who built with peaks and valleys, seemed here to have wrought a dramatic prodigy—a hall of grandeur that led to the mountain."